Katie waited for her brother to come home. Neither the chicken roasting in the oven, the potatoes steaming, nor the vegetables boiling needed her attention until they were done. Her reflection rose up in the darkening window over the kitchen sink; she didn’t like how nervous she looked so she went to sit at the […]

It was Dana who first introduced him to me. She had a small unit tucked up in the recesses of an ancient building, its sole window affording such a grand outlook of the wall across the alley that she had taken down the curtains and put around the aperture some pieces of wood, so framing […]

Hammer toes were something she’d been born with. Her grandmother had truly awful feet – toes overlapping, varicose veins, bunions and all sorts. Summertimes, when she set them free in sandals, were grim. ‘Don’t look down’ was the collective agreement at family get togethers. Chloe’s weren’t as bad as her grandmother’s – yet. Nevertheless, her […]

The couple ahead of Stevie and Peter slipped on facemasks and boarded the cable-car. He wore a suit, and she wore layers of linen. Under the couple’s weight, the car rocked, and the woman grabbed the man’s arm. He guided her onto the bench facing the mountainside, and a lapdog emerged from her layers of […]

Sym stared into the open pit of the hearth. Nothing but ash and dust; a few lumps of kindling turned to carbon. And yet he couldn’t stop staring. A vortex seeking to suck him in. Four days now he’d sat in that armchair. He’d moved a couple of times, of course. Sipped a few mouthfuls […]

Cathal Kehoe grew up in rural Ireland. After graduating with an MA in Film from National University of Ireland Galway, he moved to Dublin where he currently lives. He works as a Content Writer and runs a writing group that used to meet up every two weeks in the city centre but has since moved […]

James Gard always has to look out the window when asked where he is living, to remember if June is supposed to be summer or winter, the bad season winter or the monsoon, or what job he is supposed to be doing;  more recently the latter has involved various attempts to use his legal degree. […]

Becky Jones is a seasoned content marketer, who lives in Reading, in the UK, with her husband and two boys. As a professional marketer for over fifteen years, she writes a lot for work – blogs, eBooks, email campaigns and more. Around her work and busy family life, she loves to blog and write short […]

Meredith Wadley grew up in a military family, which means she moved a lot during her childhood. Her favourite stint was two years in Tainan, Taiwan. Since she’s no stranger to being an outsider, she’s happily settled in Switzerland. At home in a medieval micro town on the Rhine River – where her husband grew […]

Elizabeth Wassell was born in New York, spent long years in Ireland with her late husband, Irish poet laureate John Montague, and now lives in France. She is the author of five novels: The Honey Plain (1997); Sleight of Hand (1999); The Thing He Loves (2001); Dangerous Pity (2010); and Sustenance (2011), along with numerous […]